Common excuses people give when they regress performance are, "But the new way is cleaner!" or "The new way is more correct." We don't care. No performance regressions are allowed, regardless of the reason. There is no justification for regressing performance. None.

They don't mess around do they? As for Firefox, yes, it developed as a lightweight browser out of the original Mozilla codebase (I believe). That said, over time, it appears to have gotten "quite heavy" which is a bit disappointing.

Many of you may believe that I don't like Firefox based on what I've said. On the contrary, Firefox is my primary browser with Opera in second.